Much of the success of implementing a TMS lies in the vendor-assessment stage, and we advise treasury teams to focus on four key areas: Products, Partners, Processes and Company. Besides a standard fit gap analysis, corporates should look at areas specific to their own context of operations, which may include:
Availability of file formats for bank connectivity, especially for domestic payments for which there are significant format variances.
Complexity in payment approval workflows in accordance with payment approval matrix.
Structured financial instruments (eg loans, FX derivatives) that require specific capture capabilities and calculations.
Reporting needs and the ease for users to adapt templates as requirements evolve.
Alongside doing away with manual tasks, implementing a TMS presents a valuable opportunity to integrate additional controls like bank account management workflows, fraud prevention functionalities, and sanctions list screening. Companies should seek from their potential vendors a clear roadmap on how to adopt the latest innovations and newest capabilities like real-time payments, APIs, business intelligence or artificial intelligence. That said, these appealing propositions are valuable only if they support the company’s actual needs.
The ability of a TMS to integrate with an ERP is a key success factor, but this represents one integration point: integrating with banks (and various bank branches) present multiple integration points. The availability of internal IT resources and any changes in internal systems that may impact project timelines should be identified, with the solution suitability and roll-out strategy across banks and markets clearly established, in collaboration with the implementation teams from the respective project stakeholders (ERP/TMS providers, banks).
When assessing a Software-as-a-Service solution, corporates should review processes that providers have in place to ensure the availability and security of the service, supported by audit reports. Such evidence is company-specific and is to be maintained directly by TMS vendors, independently from the cloud hosting company. The service level agreement (SLA) should include customer support to key users on local business hours, with response times and escalation procedures. In addition to the disaster recovery plan provided in the SLA, companies will want to define and maintain a business continuity plan with a back-up solution, such as the access to an e-banking portal, for critical activities like payment execution.
Client reference calls are the opportunity to collect evidence on a vendor’s ability to meet particular requirements (eg high volume of bank transactions, payment types and risk management scenarios). Due diligence includes the vendor’s financial structure and sustainability, as well as its profitability.
Rather than going for an all-in solution and a “big bang” implementation, companies should first ensure that the right foundations are in place in alignment with business priorities, for example cash and payment management with enhanced liquidity allocation and operational controls. From this they can then scale up and deploy functions in an incremental manner – this could include financial instruments and risk management with optimum funding/investing/hedging decisions.
This ensures the core functionalities are properly integrated through each stage of the implementation and allows harvesting actual benefits as the system progressively gains in robustness. While this phased approach may come with a slightly higher sticker price, the actual spend is linearised over the implementation timeline.
When considering the adoption by end users such as local finance executives, the user interface and the ease of use should enable users to carry their daily operations in a seamless manner. Meanwhile internal communications highlight the benefits of this new system from the users’ perspective, this helps to move the cursor from habitual disruption to compelling adoption, and minimise the risks pertaining to change management.
